Here are two red daylilies. Both I brought with me to Florida from Indiana.The Red Volunteer is doing very well. It was one of the very first daylilies I owned. It’s still one of my favorites. It grows to a height of about 24 inches and blooms for well over a month. It has reached it’s predicted height and is prolific.Baja, on the other hand, while fairly prolific, seems to be stunted in its growth. It should have reached the same height as Red Volunteer, but it’s only 12 inches tall. Also, it should bloom for a couple of months, but last year only made it to 20 days. 😥 It was one of my favorite performers in Indiana. Alas, I may have to replace it with something more native to Florida.
Tag: garden
Chartwell
This is one of the daylilies that I acquired since moving to Florida. It’s done brilliantly here. Perhaps I’ll replace my non performing varieties with more southernly hospitable varieties.
I now have eight daylilies blooming, making our front yard very colorful.
Monster
This is one of the daylilies I brought from Indiana. It hasn’t performed well here in Florida. This variety is very prolific in Indy, but it barely hangs on in this heat. (By the way, it’s now 7:21 pm and 86° outside. The bloom is the only thing that hasn’t changed from the North to the South. This blossom is roughly 10 inches across, but it sits on a stem that is only 12 inches tall. In Indy these used to be 25 inches tall. They also used to produce three or more fans each year from the primary ones, here I started with two fans three years ago and there are only four now.
I have a couple of other varieties that are doing poorly in this climate. I suspect these varieties, which go dormant in the winter, expect a longer cold spell than the few days we get here in central Flordia.
Milkweed With Aphides
 Miklweed With Ahpides |
Milkweed is a host plant for the Monarch butterfly. I have quite a stand of it in a sunny location on the east side of my house. The Monarch feed on the flowers and the Monarch caterpillar eat the leaves, sometimes stripping an entire plant in a couple of days if there are a lot of caterpillars.This plant is covered with aphis (or more properly with aphides, the plural of aphis). It would be nice to get rid of them, but any method I have researched would also kill the Monarch eggs or caterpillars…so eradicating the aphides is not an option if I want to host the Monarch.Fortunately, although I have many plants that are susceptible to aphides infestation, Crape Myrtle being one of them, none seem to be susceptible to the variety of aphis that infest the milkweed. |
Dunedin
 Dunedin |
Here’s another daylily that’s blooming now. This one is a fairly long bloomer…last year it bloomed for 107 days. As with LeeBea Orange Crush, I have two clumps, one more shaded than the other, so I expect to increase the bloom period this year.This is one of the varieties I brought from Indianapolis when we moved in February 2004. At the time I didn’t realize that this variety was named after a town on Florida’s west coast just north of Clearwater. It certainly is thriving unlike some of the varieties I hauled down here with me. |